Need raid + Jungledisk setup help

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WhatTheSchmidt

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 4, 2007
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We use Jungle Disk for our current server backup for the company and have a file server computer without redundancy just a regular 7200 rpm hd but it sounds like the hard drive is going to die soon. We have about 11-13 computers accessing the server. So I'm wondering what would be a good setup to go with? and if the raid setup can be in a separate enclosure than the computer?(I'm thinking no because we would want it to run through a sata raid card probably? The computer is just a HP $500 desktop...

don't need to be very fancy but I'm guessing we will need a raid card

1TB-2TB storage is what we are looking for.

I will update with whatever other info I run across to figure this out. Basically I think a raid 1 setup might be what we need but I don't know much about RAID arrays.
 
update: going with 3 drives, what would be the best raid to go with - it will be storage - no operating system or anything and also backed up with Jungle Disk.

Raid 5 with 3x 2TB hard drives?
 
What motherboard is the computer using because many Intel chipsets can do RAID 10. It requires 1 more drive than RAID 5 but is a much better option, and would be much better suited if 11-13 computers are accessing this data.
 
I don't know what your budget for this build is, but keep in mind that RAID is not a backup and you should still have some kind of offsite backup of your data. If you decide to go the 4 drive route, you would be better served (more expensive though) going with a RAID6 over a RAID10. The RAID6 would be able to survive ANY 2 drives failing. The RAID10 would only be able to survive the LUCKY RIGHT 2 drives failing. For example, if the R10 primary D1 and Mirror D1 both fail, you are completely screwed. You should have an offline/offsite backup which can survive deletions, corruption, viruses etc.
 
A few things that make RAID 6 not a good choice in this situation. 1) It seems he has a pretty terrible budget since his file server seems to be just a random $500 HP desktop so getting a $600 hardware RAID card that supports RAID 6 may not be an option. 2) Many chipsets support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 so it's essentially "free". 3) He already has a computer doing backup so I assume his fileserver needs RAID for uptime and with a dozen computers accessing the hard drive, performance from RAID 10 would be better than the extra fault tolerance from RAID 6 thanks to the backup server.

If performance isn't an issue, which I don't know if it is since it's already working (right?), might as well go with the cheapest route and do RAID 1 for pure uptime only. And while I normally agree that RAID 6 would be a better choice, again, I don't think it really is in this situation.
 
FrostBite said:
A few things that make RAID 6 not a good choice in this situation. 1) It seems he has a pretty terrible budget since his file server seems to be just a random $500 HP desktop so getting a $600 hardware RAID card that supports RAID 6 may not be an option. 2) Many chipsets support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 so it's essentially "free". 3) He already has a computer doing backup so I assume his fileserver needs RAID for uptime and with a dozen computers accessing the hard drive, performance from RAID 10 would be better than the extra fault tolerance from RAID 6 thanks to the backup server.

If performance isn't an issue, which I don't know if it is since it's already working (right?), might as well go with the cheapest route and do RAID 1 for pure uptime only. And while I normally agree that RAID 6 would be a better choice, again, I don't think it really is in this situation.
Click to expand...

Well, even with his limited budget, you can get a used PERC6/i for as little as $50-$60 on eBay. As for 0,1,5,10 a 4 disk RAID6 config like suggested above can support ANY 2 disk failures of the live disks in an array, while the others cant. As to the backup, I expect he has a mounted volume on the server as his client backup. This helps if the client fails due to hardware issues, but if that is your only backup one virus can wipe out your clients and the backup on your server, hence offline/offsite backup. Since he is going to spend a couple of hundred on the drives already, the card is a relatively cheap addition for uptime.
 
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FrostBite said:
What motherboard is the computer using because many Intel chipsets can do RAID 10. It requires 1 more drive than RAID 5 but is a much better option, and would be much better suited if 11-13 computers are accessing this data.
Click to expand...

I'll check tomorrow, should be intel...

mwroobel said:
I don't know what your budget for this build is, but keep in mind that RAID is not a backup and you should still have some kind of offsite backup of your data. If you decide to go the 4 drive route, you would be better served (more expensive though) going with a RAID6 over a RAID10. The RAID6 would be able to survive ANY 2 drives failing. The RAID10 would only be able to survive the LUCKY RIGHT 2 drives failing. For example, if the R10 primary D1 and Mirror D1 both fail, you are completely screwed. You should have an offline/offsite backup which can survive deletions, corruption, viruses etc.
Click to expand...

I think it will be either RAID1 or RAID10 2 vs 4 drives

FrostBite said:
A few things that make RAID 6 not a good choice in this situation. 1) It seems he has a pretty terrible budget since his file server seems to be just a random $500 HP desktop so getting a $600 hardware RAID card that supports RAID 6 may not be an option. 2) Many chipsets support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 so it's essentially "free". 3) He already has a computer doing backup so I assume his fileserver needs RAID for uptime and with a dozen computers accessing the hard drive, performance from RAID 10 would be better than the extra fault tolerance from RAID 6 thanks to the backup server.

If performance isn't an issue, which I don't know if it is since it's already working (right?), might as well go with the cheapest route and do RAID 1 for pure uptime only. And while I normally agree that RAID 6 would be a better choice, again, I don't think it really is in this situation.
Click to expand...

I don't think performance is too big of an issue. File wise there are large art files but those aren't accessed too often for the most part and the rest is a lot of brief opening of small files.


mwroobel said:
Well, even with his limited budget, you can get a used PERC6/i for as little as $50-$60 on eBay. As for 0,1,5,10 a 4 disk RAID6 config like suggested above can support ANY 2 disk failures of the live disks in an array, while the others cant. As to the backup, I expect he has a mounted volume on the server as his client backup. This helps if the client fails due to hardware issues, but if that is your only backup one virus can wipe out your clients and the backup on your server, hence offline/offsite backup. Since he is going to spend a couple of hundred on the drives already, the card is a relatively cheap addition for uptime.
Click to expand...

Will go with that card if the mobo doesn't support RAID0 or RAID10 (depending on which we go with)

Thanks
 
anyone know if Jungle Disk would work on NAS? recommend a NAS setup to go with? we have the hard drives?

thanks
 
If you keep the server then yes it would work, jungle thing would backup the NAS seen as a network folder.

If you want to just have the NAS, then I don't think so.

Personally I just had the same kind of problem for a small enterprise I was doing my internship at, they had a real HP server (with minimal setup, like a single RAM stick !) with only one SAS drive, no backup of any kind. I wanted to use Server 2008 own backup function, and that doesn't work with NAS storage, so I bought an eSATA enclosure that had a RAID controller and 2*3,5" slots, converted an internal SATA to eSATA with a bracket, and was done with it.
 
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